This blog post is inspired by a comment by Nra, about how collapse is like Nature's hard reset button, on Yuy's post on how post-scarcity could lead to societal collapse. However, I've been considering this idea since a conversation I had with Krayfish a few weeks ago about the Fermi Paradox.
The Problem[]
A virtually post-scarcity society (especially with self-replicating machines such as Von Neumann probes) has the potential to expand exponentially, eventually spreading throughout the galaxy and eventually the universe, as is conceived in the paper, Eternity in Six Hours. The Chaos Crisis is a good example of the power of self replicating machines growing exponentially; in fact, Albert Einstein once declared that "Compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe." The universe is many billions of years old, and even if a tiny fraction of the extraterrestrial civilisations in the universe achieve post-scarcity status, the universe should be thriving with life and advanced civilisation by now!
It isn't.
Assuming some of the more exotic theories such as theories about parallel universes or that we're actually 'living in the matrix', or something, SETI evidence means that there is something about the above reasoning that is wrong. Perhaps intelligent life is so unlikely that humans are the only sapient beings in the universe? Perhaps a virtually post-scarcity society is totally impossible? To me, both of these seem very unlikely. Perhaps there is some sort of Great Filter preventing civilisations from spreading to such an extent? I think that there is, in the form of "Nature's hard reset button": collapse.
Collapse[]
Here's my idea: It makes sense that, as complexity increases, stability decreases (as is pointed out in the paper, Permanence). That's why simple solutions are usually better than complicated solutions; there are less places and opportunities for something to go drastically wrong. It also makes sense that this should apply to life and civilisations. Therefore, more advanced (and therefore more complex) civilisations are less stable, and therefore more prone to collapse, and therefore more rare.
The result is that, in the universe, less advanced civilisations are more common than more advanced ones. There will be more primitive civilisations than planetary civilisations, more planetary civilisations than interplanetary civilisations and more interplanetary civilisations than the rare interstellar civilisations. This would explain what we see in our SETI data (that civilisations capable of communicating with us are extremely rare), but still matches with the prediction that life should be common in the universe.
Evidence[]
Is there any other evidence for this advancement-complexity-stability-rarity relationship? I've considered a few...
- Prokaryotic cells are much more primitive than eukaryotic cells, but prokaryotes are so common that they control a massive 80% of the trophic exchange in the oceans.
- There are a lot fewer multi-celled organisms than single-celled organisms.
- There are a lot fewer 'large' animals than 'small' animals.
- There are a lot fewer large, highly intelligent animals than large animals of low intelligence.
- There are a lot fewer large, sapient animals than large, intelligent animals.
- There are a lot fewer developed nations than undeveloped nations.
- The more advanced empires of the last few centuries had shorter lifetimes, on average, than the less advanced empires of the ancient world.
The above seems to indicate that (unstable) complexity is rarer than (stable) simplicity, and that more advanced civilisations are more prone to collapse than less advanced civilisations.
Conclusion[]
We therefore end up with a pyramid of civilisations in the galaxy, in which, the higher the level of advancement of a civilisation, the rarer the civilisation is. It also means that long-lived species may have experienced cycles of growth and collapse, meaning a region of the galaxy once inhabited by a more advanced civilisation of a certain species could be replaced by less advanced civilisations (perhaps right down to the ancient era) due to collapse. Speciation could occur.
This is contrary to the idea that, since it would take a startling coincidence for an extraterrestrial civilisation to meet just one other civilisation at a similar stage of development as itself (assuming development constantly inceases over time), never mind several, most galactic civilisations should be millions of years more advanced than each other (Apes or Angels). By taking collapse into account, most extraterrestrial civilisations will be much closer to each other in terms of technology, which is much more conductive to settings such as Galactic Crucibles.